Cobb County police investigate deadly East Cobb standoff

By Mark Woolsey

Two people are dead in a Cobb County SWAT standoff which developed after officers stopped by an East Cobb home on a welfare check call.

The officers went to the home on Vandiver Drive about 8:30 a.m. Sunday to check someone’s status. That was after worried family members  said they had not heard from that individual in awhile.

Police say they spotted a man inside of the home, but that he refused to contact them or come to the door.

“You could hear it through their (officers) loudspeakers.  Numerous attempts  made to establish contact with the subject but he refused every attempt, “ said Cobb County officer and spokesman Aaron Wilson, quoted by 11Alive News and other sources.

Police heard a gunshot come from inside the home shortly after 11 a.m. and called the SWAT team.  A SWAT drone was deployed and detected two people in the home, one of them a male armed with a handgun.

Police say at one point, shots were fired from within the home, resulting in an officer-involved shooting. The suspect was apparently wounded, police say.

Law officers eventually entered the home and found both people dead. They’ve not been identified by police.

Authorities say the Cobb Police Major Crimes is doing a death investigation while the GBI will probe the officer-involved shooting.

No officers were injured during the more than seven-hour standoff.

The GBI’s role in officer-involved shootings

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation routinely investigates the shooting of individuals by police officers, as well as any time an officer discharges a firearm while on duty, at the request of the police agency involved in the shooting.

Natalie Ammons, the Deputy Director of the GBI’s Office of Public Affairs, explained to us how the system works.

Police agencies are not required to request outside investigation of officer-involved shootings, and there is no formal agreement between the GBI and local police departments.

But police agencies make the request so that an independent agency does the investigation in an incident involving their own officers.

The investigations are carried out by Special Agents in a regional office within the area where the police agency is located. Cobb County, and much of the rest of metro Atlanta, is in the GBI’s Region 10, based in Conyers.

In Region 10, officer involved shootings and corruption investigations are the primary investigations Special Agents do, while in more rural areas with fewer police resources the agents handle a wider range of criminal investigations.

There is no special unit or division that conducts the investigation of officer involved shootings.

The announcements of the investigations can be found at the GBI’s press release web page.